In The Land Of The Blind, The Open-Eyed Get Beaten Up Series

Friday of the 11th Week in Course 2023

I had for about nine years the privilege of leading a Christian secondary school. One of the skills we taught in our writing classes was, as in many schools, how to write a resume for college applications. And, as principal, I got to read very many resumes from men and women looking for positions in the school. Our reading from St. Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth reads like a resume, doesn’t it? He is boasting, not of his humanly impressive accomplishments and awards, but of being rewarded by beatings and shipwrecks, whipping at the torture post, imprisonments all over the empire. He boasts of his weakness, certainly because the grace of Christ worked in him toward endurance. But if you were hiring anybody, would you want to be associated with this man? He sounds like someone who is a magnet for trouble!

But in our day and time, with a culture that doesn’t know how to distinguish male from female, living person from lump of tissue, and has raised sin to the level of pride, isn’t that just the place for such men and women as Paul? Our Western world is suffused with moral and intellectual darkness; it’s like nearly everyone is blind, or walks around with an eyepatch over both eyes. So many people believe that the key to ultimate happiness is grabbing all the gold and real estate and other property they can, even if they have to trample others in the process. Or they have found pleasure in a particular brand of hard liquor or game of chance or sexual deviancy and will fight to the death to keep it available. Or they have political power and will break any commandment to maintain control of others. That’s blind, we know, because happiness and pleasure are not the same thing. Everything the world can give is like a puff of smoke that vanishes with time, and all we have left is our relationship with the Ultimate, with our Lord and God.

So first we each have to determine to open our eyes wide to the truth of the Gospel, to the joy of prayer, contemplation, being in the presence of God. We must spend time learning from the Scriptures and the holy ones who came before. And after strengthening ourselves and our family with the knowledge and love of God, we can turn to the blind and share that knowledge and love. But don’t expect plaques and other human rewards when you ask them to turn from evil and to do good. You may get a verbal or even physical smack instead. But never stop looking to the Lord to be radiant with joy; your face will never be ashamed.